“So, when you think I’m getting too close to another man, you can drag me around in some archaic display of male strength, but when I have the same concern, I have to take it on faith?”
“Pretty much.” He caught the glass she shoved at him. Lemonade sloshed over the top. “However, I don’t see any need for me to drag you anywhere.” Holding her gaze, he leisurely lapped the liquid from his hand. Heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment poured through her. She took a hasty drink. The flush that had just left her cheeks came back. “Not when there’s a perfectly good table right here.”
The swallow, caught halfway down her throat, turned into a hacking cough. Standing, she wheezed for breath. Brad stood and slapped her back. She pitched forward against the table in almost the same position in which he had taken her before. His fingers lingered, tracing her spine, from between her shoulder, past her waist, to the top of her buttocks. “Would that be an invitation, darling?”
The breath she’d managed to suck in exploded out as that wicked hand came around her front, opened over her stomach, and pulled her back into the strength of his chest, the hardness of his thighs. Even through the layers of her skirt and petticoat, she could feel the thrust of his cock. Between her legs, the flesh throbbed a welcome.
“You can’t possibly want to make love again! I’m still wet from last time.”
She only realized what she’d said when Brad froze and his fingers curled into her stomach. His chin tucked into the curve of her shoulder and neck. His mouth brushed her ear as he whispered, “If you’re trying to discourage me, darling, you’re going about it all wrong. Reminding me that my seed is still nestled between those sweet thighs is only going to make me want to give you more.”
“That’s crude.”
“That’s honest. Nothing a man enjoys more than marking his woman.”
She touched her neck. “You are beginning to sound as if you’re a dog instead of a man!”
Steady pressure turned her around, despite her efforts. She rose up on her toes, resisting, but all that did was make it easier for Brad to arch her over his arm, capturing her between the strength of his chest and the hardness of the table. His expression was very serious as he said, “The most important part of that sentence is the word man.”
He shifted his grip, knocking her off balance. She grabbed for his shoulders. His hand brushed her hip, then her thigh before hefting her skirt with two tosses.
“What are you doing?” And why wasn’t she resisting?
“Checking for myself how wet you are.”
His callused fingers skimmed up the inside of her thighs, slipping into the slit in her new drawers, finding her as wet as she’d implied—but not with his seed. Her desire was what he found. She closed her eyes, mortification rising faster than a fresh blush.
“Damn.”
“It’s your fault.”
His fingers swirled gently against her opening. “Sweetheart, there isn’t a man alive who would mind taking the blame for this.”
Another swirl of his fingers emphasized the dampness she couldn’t seem to help. As he had before, he probed lightly with one finger, inserting it just a little. It caught on her raw flesh. She bit her lip to fight back a cry, but when he inserted a second one, she couldn’t help but flinch.
His palm flattened over her vulva. “Sore?”
He was always so matter-of-fact about these things. She didn’t know how he did it or why it excited her so, but it was almost a relief when he straightened, taking her with him, holding her close. Her skirt fell about her thighs, gathered in the middle, hugging his arm.
“Are you sure you’re a man of God?”
Another hesitation. “Are you asking because I have a man’s appreciation for your body?”
“I’m asking because you have an understanding of my body that even I don’t have.”
A burst of laughter reverberated down her spine, mocking her. She shoved at his arm and elbowed him in the stomach. He let her go as far as she could, which wasn’t very, considering she was still trapped between him and the table.
His hand came up. “Look at me.”
She batted it away. “I know where that’s been.”
“That was my other hand.” Inexorably, he tipped her chin up. “I owe you an apology.”
“For forcing me to marry you?”
“No, that doesn’t need an apology.”
“Then what does?”
“I lost my temper earlier. I had no right to humiliate you.”
He was apologizing for their interlude? How dare he? “No, you didn’t. Anyone could have come in that church. My mother almost caught us.”
That devil smile was back on his lips. He stroked the back of his fingers down her cheek. “That wasn’t humiliation, sweetheart. That was fun.”
This conversation was getting her nowhere. “If you weren’t apologizing for that, what were you apologizing for?”
“Dragging you through the streets.”
“I think a hundred residents cheered.”
He grimaced. “And that was wrong.”
“Are you saying you’re never going to get mad at me again?”
Another stroke down her cheek. “Heck no. I imagine you’ll get my dander up four or five times a week.”
“But?”
“How we resolve that will be just between us.”
“You’re sparing my pride?”
“I like your pride. I don’t like seeing it ground into the dust.”
She noticed his knuckles. They were bruised.
“You got into a fight?”
“I had a bit of a discussion with someone.”
She also noticed the blood spots on the right knuckle. He hadn’t fought last night.
I like your pride. I don’t like seeing it ground into the dust.
Anger left her in a rush. She touched her fingers to the darkest bruise.
“Someone made fun of me, didn’t they?”
He took a step back so fast that she had to catch herself against the table. “He won’t make that mistake again.”
“You’re a minister.”
“You keep harping on that.”
“Ministers don’t fight.”
With a shrug, he said, “So I’m a bit Old Testament.”
No, he wasn’t. He was the most understanding preacher their town had ever had. Sunday sermons were full, and people who hadn’t gone to church in years showed up to bend his ear. Cattle Crossing had become a town rather than a mud pit solely through his popularity.
And he’d fought for her. When he’d been right and she’d been wrong, simply because . . . She didn’t know why. She caught his hand before he got back to his seat.
“Why?”
He looked surprised, as if she should know the answer ahead of time. “You’re my wife.”
The elation fled. It was his pride he’d been protecting, not hers. She should have known.
“You’ve got my support, always.”
She blinked. Not his pride. The tears came out of nowhere, burning her eyes, clogging her throat. Oh shoot, now she was going to make a fool of herself?
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
He sighed. “You are.”
“Well, what do you expect?” She took a swing at him. “You fought for me.”
He caught her fist. Tears blurred her eyes, blocking his image. “You’d rather I let some yahoo drag your name through the dirt?”
“I’m trying to hate you, darn it.”
“Evie, that doesn’t even make sense. I’m your husband.”
“Who I was planning to divorce.”
He pulled her against his chest. The shake of his head vibrated against her cheek. It was natural to bury her face in his shirt, to breathe in the comfort of his scent.
“How can I hate you when you do something like that?”
“Give it time. I’m sure I’ll give you cause.”
“No, you won’t. You’re a saint.”
“I’m about as far as a body can get from sainthood.”
“Not in my eyes.”
He tipped her chin up. She didn’t even know with which hand. What’s more, she didn’t care. “Give me time, I’ll likely do something to horrify you.”
“Then I guess we’re pretty much suited to each other, because I’m sure I’ll horrify you, too.”
“You tend to make me smile.”
She liked the thought of that. Her stomach rumbled. His immediately answered with a rumble of its own. “And if we don’t get something to eat soon, the congregation will find us propped against this table, dead of starvation.”
“We can’t have that.”
She searched his gaze, seeing nothing but the truth in the darkened depths.
“Never doubt that I’m proud of you, Evie.”
His hand slid down over her neck, opening over her chest before contracting around her breast. “So, how sore are you?”
Sore, but when she thought of how he’d defended her, something no one had ever done, of the sense of loyalty that had him doing that despite the fact that her behavior had to have embarrassed him, she took a step closer and snuggled his cock into her stomach. “Not that sore.”
His smile was soft, tender, hot. “Good. Because I thought we’d try something different.”
“Really?”
His fingers threaded through her hair, tugging softly, sending erotic pings of awareness through her body. “I wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
Eleven
IT WASN’T UNTIL three days later that she realized he’d never answered her original question. And she might not have realized it then if Nidia hadn’t come into Millicent’s restaurant. Not as big as her first restaurant in Cheyenne, Millie’s II had the same garish exterior, the same bursting-at-the-seams clientele, and the same mix of proper with improper. Millie’s determination to make a buck and the banishment of anyone who complained were the definitive levelers of most social conflicts.
But Millie’s was a place of equal opportunity for everyone, and Nidia did walk through the door, looking stunning as always in her smart navy dress that showed off her curvaceous figure and snapping brown eyes. Her hair glowed a glossy black in the bright light and her lips glistened, a full pouting red.
The woman fascinated Evie to nearly the same extent that Brad did, and for the same reasons. Nidia owned the Pleasure Emporium, the whorehouse that operated above the saloon. She was a woman who should be hard, and was by all accounts hard, but whenever Evie painted her, another image appeared. Like it did with Brad, her artist’s eye saw Nidia as other than what she pretended to be. Something softer, more vulnerable. Another puzzle to be shifted through.
“Hey there, Nidia,” Millicent called, coming out of the kitchen, plates of steaming food stacked up her capable arms, “don’t often see you here twice in one week.”
At Millicent’s call, every male head in the room turned. If Evie hadn’t been watching Nidia so closely, she would have missed the other woman’s stiffening. In anyone but a notorious madam, she would have called the shiver that took her . . . distaste.
Head up, shoulders back, a look as haughty as that of any queen on her face, Nidia moved farther into the room. “I have a wish to speak to you.”
A few of the men stood as she approached. Off-colored comments followed. Millie bonked the man closest to her on the head with her big wooden spoon. “Find some respect.”
“What the hell for? She’s just a goddamn wh—”
This time Millie’s spoon smacked across his face. “To keep some teeth in your head.”
“Darn, Chuck, watch your mouth.” The speaker—Chuck’s tablemate—cuffed Chuck on the back of the head. “I don’t want to get banned from the best eats in miles because you don’t have the sense God gave a goose.” He looked up at Millie, his face all but obscured by facial hair and his hat. “Chuck’s real sorry, Millie. It won’t happen again.”
Millie huffed and folded her arms across her ample chest. Everything about Millie was . . . ample. Her personality, her taste in clothes, her build. Her generosity. “I don’t like the look of him.”
Chuck looked up, wiping his mouth, “I’m sure not that fond of the look—”
The wrangler on the other side of Chuck, the one shoveling food into his mouth as if he hadn’t seen it before, elbowed him in the side hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
The door jangled again. A mean-faced man with his hat pulled down low over his sandy brown hair came in to stand behind Nidia. In the last year Elijah had become Nidia’s champion for reasons Evie didn’t understand.
All it took to have men sitting back down and the risqué murmurs ending was one glance from his dark green eyes. Sometimes it was very hard for Evie to remember Elijah as the gentle man who’d loved Amy so much and worked their farm with such peaceful enjoyment.
It almost seemed like that was the illusion, and this hardfaced, deadly shell of a man, just looking for an excuse to release the rage inside him, was the real thing. It was almost as if Amy’s death had ripped the mask from his soul.
The door slammed behind Elijah as another patron came in, startling her. Evie dropped the glass she’d been using to cut the biscuits. It rolled across the counter. Elijah caught it before it could roll off. His eyes met hers. “Careful.”
The banked anger in his gaze made her shiver. “Thank you.”
Millie rapped her spoon on the counter. “Everyone, this here’s the Reverend’s new bride, Mrs. Swanson. She’s here to learn how to cook. I don’t have to remind everyone how good things have been since we got Reverend Swanson to come here—”
“The preacher don’t make no never mind to me,” a man called from the packed doorway.
Millie slammed her hands on her hips. “You just never learn when to shut that yap of yours, do you, Red?”
“I came to eat, not socialize.”
“That’s as plain as the hair on your face.”
Red was a bear of a man with a big handlebar moustache, which was the only kept-up thing about his otherwise sweat-stained, smelly appearance.
“Seems to me you should have learned that lesson a year or so back when Cougar knocked your front teeth down your throat.”
This was the man Cougar McKinnely had kicked through the window of Millie’s last summer? The man who’d called Mara a whore? Obviously, he was short on brains as well as teeth, because everyone knew better than to touch, with word or hand, what belonged to a McKinnely. They were a very proud family and fiercely protective of their women. That also explained the strange enunciation of his words.
“I’m not eating with a fucking whore.”
“That tears it!”
Millie came around the table, spoon raised. As big as Millie was, and she was a big woman in both height and girth, she was no match for Red, who was large enough to make her look small. But Millie didn’t seemed to grasp that. She just bore down on the man as if through sheer force of will, she’d eject him. “You get the hell out of my establishment.”
Red’s chin came up. “I’m not going anywhere without my dinner. I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes for a seat.”
Evie grabbed the stone rolling pin and quickly moved behind Millie. A hand on her arm stopped her. Elijah met her gaze and shook his head. She yanked her arm free. She wasn’t leaving Millie to fight this unequal battle by herself. Another hand, much smaller, caught her wrist. Nidia. The shock of the woman touching her froze her in place.
“I could be persuaded to escort Red out for a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie.”
The drawl cut across the tense silence. Millie snapped around, scanning the waiting crowd beyond the door. “That you, Jackson?”
“Yup.”
Men and women stepped aside. It had become fashionable on Saturday afternoon to take lunch at Millie’s II, the wait for a table a time to socialize. Jackson strolled forward, the easy smile he was known for on his handsome face. He pushed his hat back. “Lunc
h sure smells good, Millie.”
“When did you get here?”
“About two pies ago and I’ve got to admit I’m a bit worried you’ll sell out before a place opens up for me.”
The one thing Millie never ran out of was food.
“Hrrmph!”
Evie noticed, for all the casualness implied byhis pushed-back hat and nonchalance, there was tension in Jackson’s body as he came up beside Red. “For a piece I’ll move this one along.”
“You aren’t going to do shit, pip-squeak,” Red snarled, his temper obviously fraying.
While not huge like Red, Jackson was hardly a pip-squeak. He was easily six feet, with a lean musculature that promised strength. Half turning, Red shifted into Jackson’s space. “Now get.”
Evie tightened her hand on the rolling pin. Jackson just smiled casually at the bigger man. “I’d do a hell of a lot for strawberry-rhubarb pie, including removing that one ball Cougar left you last summer.” He glanced at the ladies as Red’s jaw worked. “My apologies for the language.”
The acceptance was automatic. Most of the ladies were enthralled with the drama unfolding, Evie included. Despite all her efforts, she’d been pretty sheltered from encounters like this. She always heard about them secondhand, but now she was in the middle of one. She shifted her grip on the rolling pin, excitement sweeping through her blood. She met Elijah’s gaze with a lift of her chin. He snorted and shook his head, stepping between her and the confrontation, to the point he blocked her view. Men were so exasperating.
“Putting a gun in my privates isn’t fair.”
“I’m not interested in fair. I’m interested in pie, and if shooting off what’s left of your manhood will get that for me, I’m easy about it.”
The statement was delivered with the lightness of a joke, but leaning around Elijah provided Evie with a different view of the situation. Jackson did have a gun barrel wedged in the other man’s privates and a glance at his face was enough to convince her he meant every word. If Red pushed this, Jackson would shoot him.
“Heck, Jackson, either shoot or get out of the way,” a man called from beyond the door. “You’re not the only one who wants pie.”
The order was picked up by the other patrons. There seemed to be more calls for shooting than anything else. Red was not popular.
Promises Reveal Page 17
